The present invention relates generally to article handling apparatus and more specifically to apparatus capable of receiving a flow of articles such as can ends and inspecting and delivering a stack or group of accurately precounted articles such as can ends to a packaging station for manual or automatic packaging, such as bagging.
Generally speaking, can manufacturers fabricate can bodies and can ends for sale to canning operations, beverage packaging operations or the like wherein the product to be packaged is introduced into the can body and sealed therein by securing to the open end thereof a mating can end. Generally speaking, the can bodies and can ends are separately provided and packaged for use by the end user. In practice, the can ends are usually shipped in elongated kraft paper bags, each of which contains a given predetermined number of can ends in a facewise stacked or "nested" arrangement. While the number of can ends in each bagged package may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer or from customer to customer, it is preferable that an accurate count of can ends be maintained in each bag. In this way, regardless of the size of the bag, an accurate count of the can ends delivered and can ends on hand can be readily determined. Since the number of can ends normally delivered and ordered run into the millions, any manual handling for counting and inspection of the can ends is, of course, impractical. Can manufacturers employ various methods of providing the desired count of can ends in each bag, and of inspecting the ends prior to bagging to remove defective ends.
While heretofore the handling and bagging of can ends was largely a manual operation, it will be appreciated that this older method produces exceedingly high labor costs. Accordingly, it is desirable to mechanize and automate the handling, counting, inspecting and bagging of can ends insofar as can be done, to minimize the associated labor costs. Moreover, with present high-speed can manufacturing lines, manual bagging operations create an effective bottleneck in the process, which can be alleviated only by the employment of a relatively large number of operators in the counting, inspection and bagging area. This also requires additional operators and diverting machinery for diverting the can ends from the processing machine to the various bagging stations This additional machinery and operators further increase operating costs.
All of the foregoing factors additionally point to a need for automation of the counting, inspecting and bagging process. Our prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,878,945 and 4,742,669 present a method and apparatus for counting and packaging can ends and a can end counting system, respectively, which overcome many of the foregoing problems and substantially automate important portions of the counting, inspecting and packaging process. However, there remains room for further improvement.